Page:The Natural History of Ireland vol1.djvu/174

 some paces in advance, it was amusing to see two ring-ouzels pur- suing him, and approaching so near as to strike the air violently within a few inches of his head ; their loudest cries being at the same time uttered. Many an earnest and expressive look the dog gave towards me, as if desirous of advice in his extremity, but finding it in vain, he at length ran up to me, when the birds, nothing daunted, followed, and gave myself as well as two friends who were with me, the same salute, flying so near that we could almost have struck them with our hands. At the beginning of the onset, a female bird appeared, as if inciting the males forward, and continued until they attained the highest pitch of violence, when like another heroine, she retired to a commanding eminence to be "spectatress of the fight." Had these birds been a pair protecting their young, or assuming similar artifice to the lapwing in withdrawing attention from its nest, (in which the ring-ouzel is said to be an adept,) the circumstance would be unworthy of notice, but the assailants were both male birds in adult plumage. The chase of the dog was continued a considerable way down the glen, and for about fifteen or twenty minutes. There were two or three pair there in that season, and one of their nests containing four eggs was discovered ; it was artfully placed beneath an over- hanging bank, whose mosses, growing naturally, concealed those of which the nest was composed from ordinary view. The usual building site is on the ground, and generally on the side either of the shelving or precipitous banks of our mountain-streams.

Throughout Ireland m similar localities to those already noticed, we have met with the ring-ouzel from April to October, as in "The Glens," Glenariff, &c, about Cushendall in Antrim; about Rosheen mountain, and Lough Salt in Donegal ; at the head of the ravine between Sleive Donard, — the loftiest of the mountains of Mourne in Down, rising nearly three thousand feet above the sea, which washes its base, — and the mountains to its north-west; on the heights of Carlingford mountain in Louth, where the beautiful flowers of the rare Rhodiola rosea at the same time met the eye; about Achil Head, one of the most westerly points of Mayo ; and on the high rocky lulls